Lessons Index:
6. CHART MAKING FOR NAVIGATORS
Osher Map Library
University of Southern Maine
Charting Neptune's Realm:
From Classical Mythology to Satellite Imagery
An exhibition at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine, Portland, 4 April 2000 to 11 January 2001
Donald S. Johnson, guest curator
CHARTING THE GREAT WINDS
Osher Map Library Lesson
Charting Neptune's Realm
Lenora Liebowitz, Peter Rice, Andy Alley
B. Background Information
The Greeks believed that the gods were the same as people only more powerful. They had husbands, wives, and children. The Greeks believed that the gods controlled people's lives directly. Each god was responsible for an element of nature or an aspect of humanity. Zeus was king of the gods and controlled weather. His wife was Hera was the goddess of marriage and children. Athena, his daughter, was the goddess of wisdom and war. Zeus's brother, Poseidon, was ruler of the oceans. Other gods and goddesses were Aphrodite, goddess of love; Apollo, god of music, poetry, and purity; Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, was the goddess of hunting; Ares was the god of war; Hermes was messenger for the gods; Demeter, goddess of fertility; Hephaestus, blacksmith for the gods; and Hestia, goddess of the hearth.
When the Romans overran Greece, they kept the gods but changed their names.
| GREEK | ROMAN | FUNCTION |
| Zeus | Jupiter | chief god |
| Hera | Juno | his wife |
| Athena | Minerva | wisdom |
| Poseidon | Neptune | ocean |
| Aphrodite | Venus | love |
| Apollo | Apollo | light |
| Artemis | Diana | the hunt |
| Ares | Mars | war |
| Hermes | Mercury | messenger |
| Demeter | Ceres | harvest |
| Eos | Aurora | dawn |
| Hephaestus | Vulcan | blacksmith |
| Hestia | Vesta | hearth and home |
One important Roman myth was of Ulysses. Ulysses and his crew were on their way home with the help of King Aeolus, king of the winds. He had caused the gentle west wind, Zephyrus, to blow. He had also given Ulysses a mysterious bag. Ulysses' crew thought Ulysses was hiding a treasure in the bag, so they opened it releasing Boreas (the north wind), Eurus (the east wind), and Notus (the south wind). These winds drove Ulysses' ship back to the Island of Aeolian, where they had to start all over again.
To the Greeks and Romans winds were gods; they were personified, but could not be seen. They were the first civilizations to draw pictures of the wind gods on maps. Before compasses were in use, winds were how people showed direction on maps. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, devoted a whole chapter in his book, Meteorologica, to naming the winds and the directions from which they came.
In the Middle Ages Europeans rediscovered the writings of the philosopher, Aristotle, and the works of Ptolemy, a Greek scientist who designed a system of organizing maps that's still used today. Ptolemy's map had wind heads on them. These were pictures that personified each wind. In the 1500's cartographers sometimes drew wind heads as people living at their time, people in fancy dress, sailors, or even skulls. The wind heads went out of style in the late 1600's as the compass rose emerged as a more popular depiction of directions. Now wind direction is simply shown with arrows.
In this lesson, it is Poseidon/Neptune in whom we are most interested. The god of the sea had many minor gods under his control; servants of his who had spheres of influence within the realm of the sea. Perhaps the most famous of these was Boreas: god of the north wind. It is from his name that we have the Aurora Borealis, a combination of Aurora (dawn light) and Boreas (the north).
The Greeks, when they wanted a safe journey across the sea, would pray to Poseidon as a general statement, and then they would pray to the god of the wind they wanted. In this way they covered all their bases since the waves would be good to them, and the winds would be favorable. As mentioned with Ulysses, getting on the wrong side of the winds, either through omission or commission, could cause difficulties.
The ships of the ancient world were able to sail only in the direction the wind was blowing. The great, square sails were only good when going in the direction of the wind since the ships themselves lacked both deep keels and stern-post rudders found on modern sail boats. These ships were shallow enough to be pulled onto the beach at the end of a journey, and the steering mechanism was a simple oar usually suspended on the right side of the stern.
During the Renaissance, with the attendant rise of interest in things classical, members of the intelligencia began to scatter classical references through their work. This practice was to show status, for the use of classical allusions marked the user as a member of the educated class. People continue to scatter icons through their conversation and work today.
An examination of Gregor Reisch's untitled
map of the ecumene shows four heads that indicate the directions
of the winds. The wind from the south is Meridies. Since the
highest point of the sun is its meridius, and since, for the
European and Mediterranean traveler, the sun at noon is always
in the south, the wind from the south is so named. Oriens, the
wind from the east is named because it comes from the Orient.
The west wind is named Tidens for the flow of water from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The north wind, Septenirio, however,
is more difficult to explain. 'Septen-' is the prefix from Latin
for the word 'seven.' September used to be the seventh month
until Julius and Augustus Caesar had additional months named
after them and stuck into the middle of the calendar. But why
is the north is associated with the number seven? That's an inside
joke for people who study the stars. There are seven stars in
the Big Dipper (The Great Bear, Ursa Major), and since the Big
Dipper is always in the north, hence the name of the wind that
comes from the north uses that knowledge to gain its name. Now
only a person of significant intellect or learning would be able
to reach that conclusion.
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The other two maps - Sebastian Münster's Typvs Vniversalis, and Jan Jansson's Tabular Anemographica Seu Pyxis - show a continuation of this practice of naming winds. Münster has placed the twelve winds as used by Aristotle on his map. The simple system of winds from the cardinal points has blossomed to twelve points. By the time of the Jansson wind chart there are thirty two different winds, each one 11.5° apart. The faces shown as representing the winds are recognizable as humans. They represent the races that inhabit the areas of the earth from which the winds blow as seen through European eyes. In addition, Jansson has given the names in six different languages; now the real scholar has 192 different names to learn.
Some of the names given on the map represent the direction
from which the winds blow:
| Name of Wind | Direction | Reason for Name |
| Septentrio | North | Came from the direction of the Big Dipper |
| Libeccio | Southwest | Came from Libya in Africa |
| Greco | Northwest | Came from Greece |
| Tramontana | North | Came from across the mountains |
| Boreas | North | North wind in Rome |
We sometimes consider the people of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to be less sophisticated than we are today. They believed in many superstitions and ancient myths. Today we are more apt to trust science. Thus we in Maine would never call the frigid winter wind from the northwest 'The Montreal Express.' The southerner would never call the warm, moist wind from the south-west 'Fever Wind.' Yet we do. We talk about the wind, those special winds, as though they had attributes and personalities. A mid-westerner will tell you that the wind across the prairie has nothing to stop it except a barbed wire fence, and that blew down last year.
By giving a name to something we can take control of it. This is why the unnamed monster is always more terrifying than the monster with a name. Movie producers have used this technique since there were movies. The shadow of the evil figure is more frightening than the figure itself. Seeing the figure for what it is takes some (or all) of the mystery out of it. The Greeks and Romans were the same way. By giving names to the winds they were able to understand them. Even if they could not control the winds, they at least felt they were able to comprehend them better.
In the lesson that follows, the students will be asked to generate a wind chart of their own using names of their own based on how they think of the winds that blow from certain directions. In Maine, the "Montreal Express" can be used for the wind from the northwest, but certainly a student in Iowa or California would never use that name. This is the same naming system that was used in ancient and medieval times. To a Roman, the wind from the northeast was a Greek wind, while a Greek might have described it as the wind from the Hellespont. Where you are when you face the wind will determine what you call it.
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